More children have come forward with complaints against a teacher who this week admitted 49 charges of sexually abusing pupils – and police say they are stretching back their investigation to the mid-1990s.

Commissioner Larry Forbes, who was appointed this month to Pamapuria School near Kaitaia, said that since James Parker’s identity was revealed on Wednesday more children had contacted authorities.

“I’m not aware of how many or where they’ve come from, but I understand there have been more and I understand there’s a strong possibility that there are more to come. But numbers I don’t know.”

Parker, 37, was a teacher and deputy principal when he committed the offences against boys in his care.

Most of the 49 charges related to offences since 2009, but police yesterday told the Weekend Herald their investigation would stretch back to the mid-1990s.

That comes after a former principal revealed she had complained about Parker to police when he was a first-year teacher. She was concerned that he was sharing his own bed with pupils during “sleepovers” at his house, among other things.

Her claim was backed by an ex-pupil of Parker’s who said he had children over for sleepovers and shared tents with them on school camps.

She said it was well known in the community that the principal had approached police to make a complaint about Parker.

Had his name suppression continued it is likely that many of these crimes against children would have remained undetected by police. Now that he is named and the extent of his crimes known people feel free to come forward.

Those who favour name suppression always claim it is to protect victims…yet in this case, only the perpetrator has been named and not a single victim has had details published. The fact that since he has been named has highlighted even more abuse at his hands proves the point that naming them works.

ERO chief review officer Graham Stoop told Morning Report that the office would expect a school to bring a matter such as this to its attention, but there is no evidence that Pamapuria School’s board of trustees did so.

Stoop might want to re-check with those who did reviews of Pamapuria school. Is it true that ERO knew about the Police letter and had copies of in-committee/in-confidence minutes from when the matter with Parker was originally brought up? And despite all that, why did ERO reviewers then give positive reviews of the school, and of the Deputy Principal – Parker?

The text of the letter from the Police to the Board of Trustees (in 2009) includes:

“in my view, it is clearly inappropriate for a school teacher to invite school children to their residence outside of school hours and having them sleeping over and I would suggest that this practice must stop immediately and protocols be initiated to stop this from occurring in the future. Given that Mr Parker holds the position of Deputy Principal I believe that this is highly unprofessional and has obviously called Mr Parker’s reputation into question in this instance. “

And while we are at it. What is Parker’s lawyer thinking suggesting that Parker’s offending was “no suggestion of violence”. It was repeat sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is violence. End of story.

It is no surprise that the blame game has started in the Far North. Are we really going to blame the system this time? Or were there an awful lot of people who could have spoken up for those poor kids?

The former chairman of Pamapuria Primary School’s board of trustees, Ian Bamber, told RNZ that he knew nothing about the warning but plenty of people did.

He said he learnt of the letter this year, and has since discovered many others already knew about it.

“ERO knew about the letter, police knew about the letter. CYFS knew about the letter, and the board at the time knew about the letter.”

Mr Bamber said it appears the one person who was not warned by police was Parker.

I see that the kiddie fiddler was the staff representative on the Board of Trustees at the time of charges being laid. How long was he on the Board? was it for the duration of the offending? Did he ensure that things like letters went missing or other ‘clues’ to what was going on were shut down?

No doubt we’ll have another review on its way.

Kiddie fiddler James Parker had this to say in court:

“Those of you who know me well will know that I am not the monster that many will portray me to be. I am, however, the unwilling host of a most terrible disorder.

“It is my great hope that all who have suffered because of me will now be able to get the help they need. It is also my desperate wish that I too will be able to receive help for this sickness within me.”

Right! And you couldn’t have sought help for your “most terrible disorder” and “sickness” during the eight year period? Spare me the tears. You are a cold, calculating, selfish monster.